Left 4 Dead Hands-on Preview - Survivor Side
AND THE WINNER IS..
So, what happens when you make it to the end? In the case of the hospital scenario, the location is on the hospital roof. It's a giant building and the roof has many structures and openings for zombies to come around and through. On one side of the roof, there is a large storage facility with a sort of lookout/guard tower on top (see image on right and below). If you climb on top of the storage facility and then go up the stairs of the tower, in the top room there is a window with an attached machine gun. Also in the facility is a radio for calling in the rescue helicopter and a few gasoline barrels for spreading around. On the opposite side of the roof is the actual helicopter pad where the helicopter will come and rescue you.
The finale works like this: The four of you (survivors) have battled your way all the way to the roof. As soon as you get to the storage facility, the Director lets you get prepared by stopping all zombie horde and boss spawns. For once you are actually safe! Take this time to spread out the gasoline containers (when you shoot them, they ignite and cover the ground with fire just like Molotov cocktails), get positioned and make sure a person is on the machine gun. When ready, somebody will use the radio to call for the rescue helicopter and the finale begins!
A countdown timer appears on the screen that lets you know how long until the helicopter arrives. This is when the real fun starts. The next few minutes are spent defending yourselves from wave after wave after wave of zombie attacks, and it really offers some of the most intense and scary moments of the game. To give you an example of what happened to me, I was on the roof of the storage facility with the M16 mowing down the horde, and everything seemed to be going great. Suddenly, without warning, a Smoker tongue darted right for my neck from a nearby roof. I was caught! The tongue yanked me off the roof and I lay helpless and injured right where the zombie horde had been coming through. I screamed for help. A fellow survivor ran out from the facility, trying to beat the next wave - right when he got to me, we heard the oncoming threat. The machine gunner did all he could to cover us, but a few of them still made it past. My rescuer stopped helping me up, swung his gun, pushed back the zombies, and blasted them right in the chest. With the current danger over, he finished helping me up and we both made it safely back to the storage facility to get ready for the next wave.
For most of the scenario, you only ever have to face one Tank at a time. In the case of the finale, though, two are spawned at once! This unpleasant feature brought some of the most intense and heart-pounding events that many times led to death for at least some of the survivors (such as myself). It's hard enough when everyone is focusing on one Tank to take him down before he does any real damage, but for two, it's near impossible. The one tool that does give you at least a chance of destroying them is the mounted machine gun. The machine gun has unlimited ammo and never needs cooling down, so it spews out a constant stream of bullets that do major damage to whoever is in the crosshairs. The weakness of it being that it is mounted and has a limited range of vision. Smart Tanks will do best knowing where they can avoid it, and even smarter Tanks (like the one I had the pleasure of meeting) will decide to take the fight right to the machine gun room. Flaming Tank + Small Room = One Really Bad Day.
Okay, so maybe you actually survive until the helicopter arrives. The landing pad is on the entire other side of the roof (pictured above), which means you and your team will have to abandon your fortifications and venture across it. This is a whole different danger, as boss infected will be ready and waiting since you're going into their territory. More than a couple of times we had our dreams of escaping snatched away at the last moment, like the time I was heading toward the helicopter ladder when a Smoker yanked me from the landing pad all the way into a mass of ravenous zombies (it ended badly for me). Once you actually do climb up the ladder and board the helicopter, there is another mounted machine gun waiting for someone. The helicopter takes off, flying around the building allowing you to see and shoot at the infected horde. When you finally have this experience with all four survivors still alive, words can't describe the feeling of victory and accomplishment.
NEXT: The Weapons of Left 4 Dead >>
